Introduction

Game Kit offers features that you can use to create great social games.

Game Kit Features

Game Kit provides three separate pieces of functionality:

Game Center offers a centralized game service that connects players to each other. Game Center implements many different features:

Friends allow players to create anonymous online personas. Users connect to Game Center and interact with other players through an alias. Players can set status messages as well as mark other players as friends.

Multiplayer allows your game to create network matches that connect players through Game Center. Players can invite their friends or be connected to anonymous players. Most importantly, players can receive invitations to join a match even when your game is not running. Your game is running on each device and the instances of your game exchange match and voice data with each other.

Turn-Based Gaming provides store-and-forward network match infrastructure where the match is played out over a series of discrete turns. This kind of match can be played without requiring all of the players to be connected to Game Center simultaneously.

Leaderboards allow your game to store and fetch player scores from Game Center.

Achievements provide the ability to track a player’s accomplishments in your game.

Challenges allow a player to challenge other players to complete an achievement or to beat a leaderboard score.

Game Center is available on iOS and OS X.

Peer-to-peer connectivity allows your game to create an ad hoc Bluetooth or wireless network between multiple iPhones in the same local area. Although designed with games in mind, this network is useful for any type of data exchange among users of your app. For example, an app could use peer-to-peer connectivity to share electronic business cards or other data. This functionality is only available on iOS. You can also get the same functionality using Game Center.

In-game voice chat allows your game to provide voice communication between two iPhones. In-game voice relies on your game’s network connection to another user to create its own network connection to transmit voice data. This functionality is only available on iOS. You can also get the same functionality using Game Center.